The first Vilnius Jazz festivals
By Rūta Skudienė
The story of the well-known international jazz festival in Vilnius began in 1987. At that time, the Youth Music Club was in the capital, and the Lithuanian National Revival Movement was coming into being.1 Two concerts took place in the hall of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences at Gedimino Ave 3, organised by the engineer Antanas Gustys, a great jazz fan, and chairman of the jazz and avant-garde music section of the Youth Music Club.
A year later, the first international jazz festival Jazz Forum ‘88 was held in Vilnius, from 30 September to 2 October. Five concerts were held at the Trade Unions Palace of Culture on Tauras Hill. Most of the performers were from Lithuania, the Soviet Union, and countries of the Eastern Bloc, but the audience could also hear musicians from West Germany, America, Finland, and the Netherlands. Called Jazz Forum, in the words of Antanas Gustys, the event sought to reflect the European contemporary jazz scene as widely as possible. The concerts were recorded by Lithuanian Television, the audiences were large, and as many as 1,200 listeners gathered on the last evening.2 In 1988, stars such as the American pianist and composer John Fischer, the pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, the saxophonist Gerd Dudek, the bassist Ali Haurand, and others, performed at Jazz Forum.
On 13–15 October 1989, the festival was held under the name Vilnius Jazz. The ambitions of the organisers to put on an international event in Lithuania paid off: musicians from Great Britain, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, the FRG, and the GDR, arrived. Two bands from Soviet Russia and four from Lithuania also participated. The Lithuanian jazz musicians Petras Vyšniauskas, Arkady Gotesman and Vladimir Tarasov formed creative bands with Japanese, German and Swiss musicians for performances at the festival.3 However, organisational matters were complicated due to the political and economic situation in the late 1980s, and it was poorly funded: for example, the fee for the band of the festival’s star saxophonist Courtney Pine used up most of the festival’s budget.
The stylistically coherent programme of the festival in 1990 was on a par with the latest European jazz trends and the collaboration of musicians from different countries. Undoubtedly, this testified to the more liberal cultural and political environment in Lithuania.
Nowadays, the Vilnius Jazz festival is held in the capital city annually, and is one of the best-known international festivals in Europe, stylistically similar to new European jazz. It is called the “threshold between the East and the West”, a centre of music in Eastern Europe, shaping trends in modern jazz.4 Vilnius Jazz is listed in world jazz catalogues such as the Eurofile Music Industry Directory, Music & Media (Netherlands), and the Jazz Times Annual Festival Directory (USA), and is a full member of the Europe Jazz Network.
The goal of the event is to introduce modern trends in world jazz, and conceive international projects. Since the first festivals, Vilnius Jazz has been characterised by radical innovation; besides jazz and free improvisational music, other genres, academic, ethnic, rock, industrial, etc, are performed at the festival. In addition to the aforementioned Courtney Pine and Alexander von Schlippenbach, celebrities of the jazz world such as Mikhail Alperin, Arkady Shilkloper, Sainkho Namtchylak, Talvin Singh, Steve Lacy, the Zawinul Syndicate band and Billy Cobham played on the stage at the first festivals.
The first Kaunas Jazz festival took place on 19–21 April 1991. Over time, it has grown into the largest event of its kind in Lithuania. It is held every year, not only in concert halls but also on the streets and squares of the city.
In the late 1980s, a powerful movement swept through Lithuania with the establishment of many youth music clubs. Jazz lost some of its significance as an expression of resistance, and the Singing Revolution emerged, which fostered a more sociable and democratic environment. At 1,000-strong rallies, folk songs were sung, while rock and teenage pop groups made a noisy return to concert stages.
The first decade following the reestablished independence on 11 March 1990 was complicated, both for jazz musicians and for the cultural establishment as a whole. People had to learn to live and work under conditions of fierce competition, with the laws of the market being applied to the arts. The festivals in Birštonas, Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipėda were the safest haven for jazz musicians. The performers had grown up in a spirit of anti-Soviet resistance, and gained strength by belonging to a special socio-cultural jazz environment, and by gathering together into a stylistically united jazz fraternity. Ensembles of various performers, with Vladimir Čekasin and Petras Vyšniauskas, quartets, and big bands, were formed, with musicians moving from one group to another; and alliances with foreign jazzmen were created for festival programmes. The Vilnius Jazz Quartet (1989), the Lithuanian Jazz Trio (1989) the Labutis Jazz Quartet (1990), Octet (1997), the Lithuanian Art Orchestra led by Vladimir Tarasov (1991), the Kaunas Big Band led by Romualdas Grabštas (1991), the Artūras Anusauskas Quintet (1993), the Džiazo Nublokšti quintet (1994), Danielius Praspaliauskis' quintet Contra Jazz, Dixieland (1994, 1996), the Doudi Jazz Band (1996), the Dainius Pulauskas Sextet (1996), and Leonid Šinkarenko's Jazz 4 (1997), were formed. www.mic.lt
The world opened up, and a new period in Lithuanian jazz arrived, marked by new possibilities and new modes of expression. The second half of the 1990s was a particularly favourable time for musicians who wished to improve their jazz studies at higher education institutions abroad: they included the saxophonists Liudas Mockūnas and Kęstutis Vaiginis, the bassist Vytis Nivinskas, the composer, arranger and educator Linas Rimša, and many others. Each had found their own individual style and reached a high level of achievement by the time they joined the European, and indeed the world, jazz community.
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1 The National Revival Movement for Lithuania’s independence from the Soviet Union (Lietuvos Persitvarkymo Sąjūdis).
2 Waskes, Frances. "The First International Jazz Festival in Vilnius", Coda, December 1988/January 1990, Canada.
3 Knuesel, Pius. "Vilnius Jazz ’89 Joining Europe", Jazz Forum, 1/1990, No 122.
4 Idem.
